AN URGENTLY WANTED REFORM.

Grey River Argus, 21 July 1923, Page 8

AN URGENTLY WANTED REFORM.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Maj’ I again draw attention to the litter futility of the present system of audit of solicitors’ trust accounts. This audit is no safeguard against dishonesty, and it is usually impossible for any auditor to discover defalcations by this method until it is too late if the embezzling lawyer simply neglects to pay trust moneys into his trust account and to enter them in |iis trust account books, and he is thus able to use them for his own purposes without detection until he is hopelessly involved. -It is surprising how long suffering the public are over this matter. The Government should impose an annual license fee of £25 on every solicitor, and should set up a fund out of those license fees to reimburse embezzled moneys, any balance of the fund to belong to the Government. This liiothod would, in many cases, costless than the present useless audit of a solicitor’s trust account, and would have the important advantage of providing funds to reimburse those robbed. In the past, there have been too many sad cases of elderly men and widows robbed of their money by a dishonest solicitor, persons who are precluded by reason of advanced age or ill-health from earning a living. The legal profession is the closest trade union in the Dominion, and imposes its own scale of fees on the public. An annual license fee of £25 for a solicitor is a very low one when it is remembered that an auctioneer has to pay £4O a year, and the provision of a fund such :s 1 have suggested should be taken up and insisted on, by every Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand. — I am, etc., COMMON SENSE.